I’m a good mother. No really, I am! I read to my kids, I give them hugs and kisses when they’re hurt, I go to school assembly when they’re getting ‘Pupil Of The Week’ and blah blah blah and so on and so forth. HOWEVER, whenever I have to push a small child on a swing for more than two minutes, I can’t help but feel I’m completely wasting my life.

[Incidentally, when I have to swing two or more children simultaneously (and, not to show off or anything, I’ve once swung four), I also can’t help but feeling like one of those Plate Spinners at the circus, dashing between each swing, keeping the momentum for each child going so they don’t start shouting “Higher! Higher!! HIGHER!!!” again. Man, that “HIGHER!!!” thing makes me anxious. For one thing, those swings get a terrible speed wobble when pushed too high. For another thing, I’m always worried the swing’ll end up doing one of those ‘Round The World yo-yo tricks. But I digress…]

And so it was with a heavy heart that I saw that the newly refurbished park down the road had a grand total of three swings in two different locations within the park. That put an end to any dream I had of being able to sit in a 360° swivel chair in the middle of the park sipping from a glass freshly-filled from the champagne drinking fountain (which are just a few of the park inventions I have previously blogged about. Two words: Ideas. Person.).

For the record, I had been enjoying that park immensely while it was being refurbished. Oftentimes, I would park the car with the five kids in my care just outside the building site and watch the workmen hard at work talking on their mobile phones. We would chat excitedly about all the new equipment and all the fun we’d have when we could finally go there – which I promised to do the very minute the park was open. It was the best fun I’d ever had at a park because nobody even unclipped their seatbelt, let alone asked me to hold their legs (and their full body weight) while they ‘swung’ across the improbably high monkey-bars or ran in front of an oncoming swing. Nobody tried to sell me a handful of tanbark posing as ‘chips’ and then expected me to eat them. Nobody took their shoes and socks off to go in the sand pit or dipped their arse into a puddle the size of the South China Sea at the bottom of the slide. And most certainly, nobody asked me to push them on the ruddy swing.

So I was just a little disappointed when the park actually opened and we had to get out of the car and go in it.

And of course, within minutes of stepping in the place, I found myself, eyes glazed over, tanbark in my goddamn shoes, simultaneously pushing two children on the swings, with yet another child over on the ‘big swing’ looking at me with imploring eyes.

“Higher! HIGHER!” the children all shouted.

“I’m wasting my fucking life!” I thought to myself. But then I thought about how I could turn it all into a blog post so now I suppose I’m just wasting yours.